Free publicity exists, it's just rarely heard

People say that there's no such thing as free publicity. I think that's completely inaccurate.

Where can you find it? Well, that's just it. It's out there but the reason it's hard to find is because the person who is supposedly driving the car in fact isn't driving the car at all. The other person is...that is the person being interviewed.

And that's the reason the person supposedly driving the car is not getting any ROI from what they're doing among the other things I've listed:
They don't have a purpose.
They don't have a focused audience.
They haven't done any research, instead they just ask questions.
They don't prep their interviewee for their questions.
They don't contact them ahead of time to ask if they have anything big they want mentioned.
They don't follow-up.

That's why they call it free publicity because it never really goes anywhere for either party.

Well, it's obvious whose in control here and that's not how interviews work. Whose holding the microphone again??

Free publicity exists, but because of poor preperation, the interviewers voice is rarely ever heard and the ROI simply gets washed away and it's completely possible that both parties voices will never see the light of day.

Wow. What a sad ending.